Charters: Students With Disabilities Need Not Apply?

By Thomas Hehir

With the Obama administration and many state governors calling for more charter schools, it may be time for policymakers to address directly the issue of these schools’ imbalanced enrollment of students with disabilities.

The enthusiasm for charter schools, which was also high during the administrations of Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, reflects the desire of many parents to have choice within the public system. This desire has only been heightened by research showing superior results obtained by charters.

In a performance comparison of Boston charter school students with those not admitted, for example, Harvard University professor Thomas J. Kane found that the students attending charters outperformed their peers at traditional public schools. His research, however, was designed with the recognition that charter students are different along some critical, perhaps immeasurable, dimensions from students attending traditional schools. This is especially true in relation to students with disabilities: Traditional public schools are serving far greater numbers of them than charter schools, particularly those whose disabilities require...